


Recrudescence

by infinite_wonders



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Character Analysis, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt!Jim, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Protective!Spock, References to Past Child Abuse, introspective, slightly AU, trigger warning, what makes Jim--Jim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-11
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-14 14:37:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/837998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infinite_wonders/pseuds/infinite_wonders
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Jim ever wrote his own autobiography. Well. The preface would probably be something like, “Hello, I’m Jim. I’m fucked up.” But it would probably end with, “It took some time, and I had some help. But I made it.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recrudescence

**Author's Note:**

> I did a thing and it involved making Jim hurt as much as I possibly could without actually killing him. 
> 
> Also, keep in mind, there are a lot of AU elements here! Also, there are two separate time lines in the fic itself--
> 
> ‘sdfsf’ is realtime, post STID.
> 
>  _‘sdfsf’_ is chronological flashbacks, from the day Jim is born, right up until Nero. 
> 
> I apologize for all discrepancies/errors. I really tried to research it but I only had one day after work and one full day off to pound this out. 
> 
> As usual, Ferrari is the bestest of best friends who puts up with me and does an awesome beta job.

********

Later, when they write biographies of him, of James T. Kirk and never, ever Jim, they always start with Tarsus, of a small boy with a genius brain who had been the youngest of the only nine and, later, three people to survive.

(Jim had always thought it was a bit funny how the other seven thousand nine hundred and ninety one people never got as much of a mention, as though seven thousand nine hundred and ninety one lives lost is somehow less of a tragedy than ~~nine~~ three people managing to actually live through it all.)

Honestly, he sort of has to scoff because it’s like he’d been _born thirteen_ (where the fuck did the first twelve years of his life go?) and also, they all have the same basic pattern--young boy with a tortured past who grows up to save the federation and isn't it heartwarming that someone with a life that bad could end up so good? 

Jim honestly doesn’t feel like pointing out the statistical probability of a boy who lived through so much death becoming a man who has no value for life as opposed to, say, a boy who _lived_ \-- through hell at the hands of the people who were supposed to keep him safe.

(But that’s another story for another day, when Jim can find comfort in Bones’ emergency bourbon stash and well, _Bones_.)

What is it, Jim wants to ask, that is so intriguing about a one time event, as horrifying as it had been, that it is seen to define a person, that it seen to define their very selves for years after? 

Because, yeah, he'd been freaked for a good while -- hadn't been able to look people in the eye without seeing them dying. He'd lied his way through the required therapy like a champ and he'd barely made it through by the skin of his teeth. 

And yes, he'll probably carry a bit of Tarsus with him until the day he fucking dies, and sometimes, when he closes his eyes, he still sees cold dead eyes, a river of blood, and a cackling madman with a god-complex bigger than the planet he’d slowly killed. 

But Jim's mostly over it and he's worked really fucking hard to get that way.

Tarsus is no longer Jim, and Jim never was Tarsus if he could help it.

All this put together is probably why when he reads his next psych eval (which yeah, he knows he's not supposed to, shut up) and it says things like, "prone to distance despite a warm exterior persona," and, "fear of touch," and, "inability to make lasting connections" and proceeds to _link it to fucking Tarsus...._

Well, Jim fucking flips.

Granted, throwing the fleet psychiatrist’s desk through a wall is probably not even in the same sphere as one of his better ideas, but Jim figures that the point comes across.

Incidentally, that's also how he figures out the whole thing with Khan's super-blood doing weird things to his body-- which is about when he has that years overdue panic attack and proceeds to run like a bat outta hell.

********

_Contrary to what his bibliographers like to say, Jim did not miraculously erupt out of a genocide at the ripe age of thirteen. He’d actually been born a sickly little thing, right in the midst of the tragedy which defines his deceased father to this day._

_(After all, that much exposure to radiation would’ve had a bad effect on a full grown adult; Jim honestly doesn’t feel like calculating just how close he’d been to dying the second he’d come into the world, such that it had been.)_

_If his mother were still in his life, if his mother still even thought about his existence, she’d tell the world about the infant with her deceased husband’s eyes-- about how her son had spent the first few months of his life being ferried from one hospital to another._

_She’d tell the world about how his birth alone had left it’s mark on him, in the form of a frankly ridiculous number of allergies and what will always be a somewhat weakened immune system._

_Then the story would revolve around a Jim who’d been one and constantly vomiting, two and unable to walk like he was supposed to be able to-- three and constantly ill, four and hurting, five and wondering why he was so different from all the other kids--_

********

The thing about Jim is that, when he’s cornered and the world starts closing in on him, he does one of three things.

One: he crawls into the nearest bed and fucks his way into an endorphin high.

Two: he jumps on his bike and rides until either his world rights itself or he runs out of gas.

Three: he drinks. Until he doesn’t remember the number of ways he’s fucked up, until the world goes from vast and endless and breathtaking to being focussed on a single glass of _whatthefuckever_.

It’s unfortunate that as part and parcel with his shiny title as the youngest Captain in federation history, all three of his coping mechanisms are officially shot to hell.

Literally officially.

Jim is _officially_ not allowed to sleep with anyone on his ship who isn’t on equal standing with him, which leaves a grand total of no one for him to get frisky with. 

He isn’t allowed to bring his bike onboard, much less ride it. And frankly, being an alcoholic Captain is a terrifying thought because if drinking and driving a car is a Bad Idea, he doesn’t even want to think about the scale of shitfuckery associated with drinking and driving a fucking _starship_.

It’s a good thing, then, that just as he’s realizing that he has no idea what the fuck he’s doing with his life (or maybe having a full blown existential crisis), he runs into the one person who--

\--has admittedly always found ways to make things worse, whether he means to or not.

Still though, as he proceeds to run face first into his First Officer’s solid chest, a small part of him settles. 

Granted, Jim can’t tell if it’s because of the epic, destiny-fueled friendship that they’re finally starting to fall into, or if it’s because he’s just used to pretending to be okay when other people are around, but he still takes strength from a moment where he can pretend things are normal.

“Hey Spock,” he says, letting a grin take over his face and trying really hard not to do anything uncharacteristic while simultaneously trying to tamp down the roiling panic. “What’s up?”

He swears that a small part of him actually deflates when Spock just raises one of his fucking kickass eyebrows and says, “I believe that the correct answer to your query would be: the ceiling. However, taking into consideration the human propensity for the use of colloquialisms, my answer would be that I have just gotten off-shift--”

Jim is too busy laughing to pay attention to the rest of Spock’s words.

He doesn’t thank Spock or otherwise perform any acts of gratitude. But it’s a near, _near_ thing. 

He also doesn’t notice the way Spock’s eyebrows furrow in a barely there frown of concern, which is a damned good thing because that would’ve probably just done something unwanted-- like making him break.

********

_People call him a genius. They throw his own IQ at his face and applaud him for the simplest things because that’s just what’s expected when people make the intuitive leaps that he does._

_Jim sometimes wonders if he’d receive the same treatment if any of them ever figured out that he hadn’t even realized that his own mother couldn’t look him in the eyes until he turned six._

_He also wonders what they’d say if they realized that his first ‘solved’ puzzle had involved linking his mommy’s dislike of him to the death of his father and spending years of his childhood wondering what he could’ve done differently to make things better for her._

_It had taken him years and several biology courses before he’d been able to convince himself that he couldn’t have done anything for his father, but he’d never been able to convince himself that he’d done right by his mom._

********

“So, this is new,” Jim says about three days later, eying the gorgeous chess set that Spock sets in front of him, as though challenging him to one of those old-school duels from earth of ages past.

Spock just quirks an eyebrow. “It is not,” he says serenely because he is a fucking Vulcan and therefore lives to be serene, “as it has been in my possession for approximately 10.32 earth years.”

Jim rolls his eyes because he knows that Spock knows exactly what Jim had meant and also because he can’t do cool things with his eyebrows even though his are so much more epic than Spock’s.

“When I was a child,” Spock continues on in the meantime because he is obviously above Jim’s petty childishness, “I was told that, when executed correctly, chess can bring order to a mind in chaos.”

Right. Jim really sort of expects the condescension at this point, but that doesn’t make it any less irritating.

“I thought that you Vulcans didn’t need help with being emotionless robots,” he sneers because he can be a nasty sonuvabitch when he’s falling apart and he’s never had much of a brain to mouth filter anyway.

Spock doesn’t reply; he just sets up the pieces.

“Indeed,” he says after a few minutes, “Vulcans do not.”

There’s something about the way Spock curls a little around the game board, something about the careful way that he handles every piece as though they were the most precious things in his world.

Now, Jim is no slouch in the intellect department but by the time he manages to parse his First Officer’s nearly nonexistent body language, the age of the chess set, and the odd emphasis that had been placed on the word ‘Vulcan’ in the last thing he’d said--

An image comes to mind, of a hopelessly beautiful woman, bright smile on her face as she hands her young half-Vulcan son one of the few things of his human heritage that she feels he could appreciate without being a failure in the eyes of his people. A game of sequences and logic, making order of chaos, a gift borne of love for her son.

Oh _shit_.

“Okay,” Jim says quietly, because that’s all that’s left for him to do, “Show me.”

(He loses spectacularly the first few games, a bit because he’s never played before but mostly because he’s too busy trying to superimpose an image of Winona and himself over Amanda and Spock and failing fucking miserably.)

********

_When people ask him about his worst experiences, they always expect him to wax poetic about his experiences on Tarsus-- they expect him to talk about death and horror and suffering the likes of which not many people would ever see. For them, those four months that he’d spent on that godforsaken planet are the pinnacle of human suffering._

_Jim begs to differ._

_Frank had been around for years before Tarsus had ever happened and he’d done things to Jim that even Tarsus hadn’t managed to do to him._

_The only reason Frank doesn’t come up on anyone’s radar the way Tarsus does is because all the people in question survived._

_But then again, most people don’t have cause to distinguish between living and merely surviving._

_Jim knows the difference._

********

Back when he’d been young and all of his wounds had still been fresh, one of his therapists had warned him about ‘triggers,’ or things in his everyday life that would set him off. She probably never realized that there were more things than loud noises and high pitched voices that would send him spiralling.

Over the years, there’ve been a whole boatload of things that Jim’s had to deal with-- everything from loud noises, to certain turns of phrase, to bed-springs squeaking, to a certain type of smile. All of these and more have set him off at one time or another.

There had also been a good two years where Jim may or may not have exhaustively-- _obsessively_ \-- researched trauma behavior in an attempt at making himself better. He’d read every blog, every story he could get his hands on with any sort of credibility because he just couldn’t live with the sort of limitations he’d been facing at the time.

(He couldn’t live with losing minutes, hours, days of his life to silence and rage and uncertainty and god, _fear_. He couldn’t live with closing his eyes at night and careening backwards into something that he’d always wanted to leave behind.)

All these years later, he’d thought he was doing pretty damned well with controlling his base impulses ~~to hide, to fight, to protect himself because no one else will.~~

It just figures that he’s proven wrong in the most public way possible.

Maybe it’s the whole thing with dying that brings all of it roaring back, or maybe it’s just the hour or so that he’d spent thinking that everyone on the ship would die ( ~~and all my fault all my fault all my fault~~ )-- but everything goes to hell.

Later on, he’ll find out that he’d somehow managed to throw Spock through his own damned console-- later on, all he’ll be able to see is the slow seep of green blood over arched brows and gorgeous bone structure and feel the sort of regret that makes him wonder why he even bothers to try when things never work out anyway.

He’ll loop the security videos over and over again til the sight of Spock’s prone form and Spock’s blood will be burned through his retinas and right into his brain.

At the time though, all he knows is long past terror. All he feels is pain and panic and too strong hands holding him down and _please stop I don’t like this_.

********

_The thing of it is, Frank starts him young (seven), molds him really because there’s no other way to describe it. He even makes it so that Jim likes it at first-- pays attention to him in a household that mostly pretends he doesn’t exist, buys him little things to make him feel special, tells him he loves him and that it’s their little secret._

_Things are actually good for eight or so months._

_(After all, what’re a few kisses here and there when the man in question is willing to buy Jim ice-cream whenever he wants and makes him feel like he matters to someone for the first time in his life? Jim is more than willing to make that sacrifice even though kisses are icky and Frank’s breath always smells bad.)_

_Unsurprisingly, it’s when his mom actually comes back that things go to shit, and isn’t it sad that he has to phrase it that way?_

_To this day, Jim isn’t sure whether he’s supposed to thank her or not-- because on one hand, it had never even occurred to him that what Frank had been doing was wrong until he’d stopped altogether that first time, from the day his mother had set foot planetside to when she left again._

_But on the other hand, it’s when she leaves again that Frank finally escalates from that cool new step-dad to something else, because apparently going for a few months without indulging himself had killed off what little self control he’d had._

_That’s about when Jim’s life goes to hell in a handbasket; that’s about when he finds out firsthand that no one will hear no matter how loud he screams._

********

Ironically, it’s Spock who ends up hunting him down, and what does it say about Jim’s life that it’s the man whom he’d hurt who’d come to offer comfort?

But yes, it’s Spock who finally finds him on Observation Deck 3, and it’s Spock who doesn’t judge when Jim can’t make himself uncurl from his position in the corner because the rest of him is still convinced that he’s back to being eight and alone, eight and broken- even though his brain knows better by this point.

Just for that, Jim thinks, the man deserves a medal. Well, that and just being there even though Jim had effectively tried to kill him without even realizing it.

“I’m seriously messed up, Spock,” he whispers a few minutes later, because he is and it needs to be said and who better to say it to than the one person who’ll never let his pity be shown?

Spock responds by sighing and then sitting next to him, somehow managing to look dignified while curled up on the floor. “I had extrapolated,” he says carefully, after a couple of seconds, “given the way you conduct yourself and the markers which are inherent in your every action...”

Jim translates that to, _‘You just threw me though my fucking station, you giant asshole. Of course you’re messed up.’_

“I’m sorry,” he says, sincerity in his voice because shit, Spock honestly has enough to deal with just by being Jim’s XO without having to also deal with Jim’s less than stellar mental state.

It’s probably a little sad that he’s surprised when Spock actually responds.

“There is nothing to forgive,” Spock says, because he’s kind of awesome at downplaying the stupid shit Jim does. “You were emotionally compromised, the root of which I do not know. However, should you ever be in need of assistance, I will do everything within my abilities to provide you with what you require.”

Jim just laughs because what the fuck, he’s being offered comfort from someone who claims not to feel.

Of course, when he says as much, Spock just raises an eyebrow.

“One is not required to be emotionally adept in order to know when another is in pain,” he says and Jim, well, he just has to shut up. Because if he doesn’t, that’ll open up a whole can of worms that Jim and his therapist should’ve buried years ago.

(If that were true, where the hell had everyone been for all of his life? Because the idea that people had known and hadn’t done anything about it is enough to make Jim’s stomach twist up in knots.)

********

_Everyone had always told him that a person’s actions define them, that every little thing someone does shows the world exactly what type of person they are._

_Whenever Jim had acted out, they’d look at him and say that it reflects badly on his upbringing, that it speaks terribly about him, about his family._

_But, Jim wonders, what does it say about them that they never asked him why?_

_(That year, he drives Frank’s pride and joy off a cliff because maybe it’ll make Frank hate him so much that he’ll stay away.)_

_(He barely convinces himself to jump out of the car before it goes over and takes him with it.)_

_(Frank doesn’t stay away.)_

********

In the interest of full disclosure, Jim spends the next few days with bated breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop and for the fragile sense of peace that he’d found to be completely torn apart -- because it’s only a matter of time, he’s sure. Now that Spock knows, he’ll probably do some kind of Vulcan risk analysis and end up deeming Jim unfit to do the only thing that’s ever given him some honest joy.

Incidentally, that’s probably also why his crew’s been so damned antsy of late. Bad enough that they had to see him lob their commanding officer in a fit of fear induced whatthefuckever, but watching him flinch and wince his way through a week’s worth of alpha shifts is probably enough to make anyone lose their shit.

So, Jim can’t say that he’s totally surprised when Spock finally confronts him again, about five days after their initial conversation; he also can’t say that he’s fully prepared for the conversation that they end up having.

“I sense that you are distressed,” Spock says, every bit the rigid Commander that they all expect him to be as he corners Jim in his own damn room. 

Jim is fully prepared for a fire and brimstone apocalypse, which is probably why he doesn’t expect the next words to come out of Spock’s mouth, “I feel I should inform you that, should you need it, you may share your quandaries such that a satisfying solution may be procured.”

 _‘Talk to me,’_ it translates, which is a far cry from, _‘I believe that you are unfit for duty.’_

Every argument that Jim had painstakingly put together ends up leaking out of his brain, and all he can do is stare. “What?”

Spock radiates discomfort even though none of it shows on his face. “I believe the correct phrase,” he says, a little uncertain,“is that I am willing to be the shoulder for you to lean upon.”

_‘I’m here. Not going anywhere.’_

Jim can’t help it. Before he can even tell himself to stop, before his conscious brain even understands what his body is doing, he finds himself wrapping his arms around strong shoulders, burying his face into a strong chest.

“Shut up and don’t move,” he says, because sudden movements are so not his friend and he can’t say, “I need you to let me have this.”

\--because he needs the anchor he’d lost with Gaila all those months ago, when Nero had thrown his deranged revenge party. He needs the world to stop spinning and tumbling and for it to just settle for once. Spock is his friend and quite possibly the only person in the universe, other than Bones, who can legitimately claim that position and frankly, Jim really needs this right now.

The fact that Spock actually bothers to reciprocate though, even if it’s just a little bit, says exactly one thing.

That Jim is fucking _tired_ and it’s starting to show.

Fuck.

********

_Halfway through Jim's thirteenth year, he’s off to Tarsus, and he spends his fourteenth birthday starving, aching, hiding out in dank cellars, and making sure that the two kids with him survive._

_(If nothing else, even if he must die, they must live.)_

_Everyone and their mother knows exactly how much of a shit show that had been, so Jim isn’t going to elaborate beyond the fact that he nearly hadn’t made it back._

_But he will say this._

_By the time he gets away from that hell-hole, he’s learned to look after himself. He’s learned to take the parts of him that hurt, the parts that are basically festering wounds, and hide them away so no one else will see._

_He’s taught himself to hide behind bravado and ego and a shit-eating grin, behind sex and snark and being just a bit of an asshole._

_That way, even if no one notices that he’s all torn up inside, at least they won’t take advantage._

_He’s taken it to heart that he can scream all he wants, but no one will ever look._

********

Jim never realizes that he shares a door with his First Officer until one day when, right in the middle of one of his less pleasant nightmares, Spock waltzes right in and proceeds to wake him up.

Well, okay. So that’s not how it goes. 

In reality, Jim spends a good deal of the time flailing and screaming and possibly crying and Spock ends up having to restrain him using his own sheets and Vulcan super-strength. There may have also been a few minutes, right between being awake and asleep, that Jim cowers away and begs not-Spock to leave him alone please, _please_.

(He completely misses the sharp, studying look that Spock aims his way while he’s off in his own personal hell.)

By the time everything calms and Jim is finally ready to shoot his mouth off to divert attention away from his most recent episode, he’s completely tangled in his sheets and feeling more than a little pathetic as he tries to free himself and _fails_.

Spock just shoots him a solemn, quelling look.

“I do not know,” he states, calmly raising a hand just as Jim opens his mouth to deflect, deflect, _deflect_ , “I do not know what you have been through, nor will I pry.

“However,” he’s careful to add on, “it would have been remiss of me to allow you to continue suffering when I had the means to prevent it.”

Jim blinks and turns on his mental ‘Spock to Regular People’ translator. _‘You were screaming in your sleep and I wanted to make it stop.’_

“Sorry,” he says after the translation is complete, rubbing a hand over his eyes to give himself an excuse to not look Spock in the eyes, “I didn’t mean to wake you up like that.” He feels a little hysterical as he wonders what the hell his life is, if he can’t even keep his problems buried anymore.

To his credit, Spock just-- he just _softens_ , for lack of a better word. The sharp lines of his profile relax minutely and his eyes are full something dangerously close to affectionate rebuke.

“Jim,” he responds, as he carefully makes his way closer and starts to detangle Jim from his sheets, smacking him lightly when he gets squirmy as though he were a particularly rambunctious two year old, _what the fuck_ , “you will find that Vulcans do not require nearly as much sleep as humans do.”

Okay, so?

“Okay, so?” Jim repeats out loud, a little rude but mostly confused, because this is not normal.

Spock just gives him an indulgent look, or as indulgent as a Vulcan can possibly project without having any facial expressions.

“So,” he shoots back a little mockingly as he finally separates Jim from the demon blankets of Satan himself, “I have had sufficient rest.”

“And as I am now in optimal condition, I will stay.”

He pauses for just a second, as though fully expecting Jim to throw a tantrum at the next words to leave his mouth, “Jim. Friend. I will guard your dreams so you may slumber.”

And Jim, well, okay. Normally he’d be putting up a hell of a fight because he is not needy, nor is he delicate and frankly, the idea of having someone watch him sleep is scary beyond belief. 

But this time, he has absolutely nothing to say--because Spock’s just admitted to considering him a friend when Jim isn’t dying and that’s, well, that’s just _huge_. Also, Jim is fucking exhausted and if a good night’s sleep involves having Spock hovering over him well, he’ll live.

Besides, Spock just seems to _care_ and Jim honestly doesn’t have the experience to deal with that level of bullshit. He just let’s Spock tuck him without putting up more than the token fuss.

It’s really the least he can do, he thinks as careful fingers straighten everything out, because Spock puts up with so much more than his pay-grade would suggest. Maybe a payraise is in order?

But before he can vocalize the thought, he’s fast asleep.

Unsurprisingly, there are no more nightmares that night.

(Spock never does tell Jim why he’d come running in that night-- never mentions that Jim’s suffering had been so strong that it had bled through to Spock’s own consciousness, through his shields, and had made it impossible not to respond.) 

(Jim had cried out for help and Spock had heard. He’d reacted in the only way he could.)

(Additionally, he’s had his suspicions for several months now and feels no need to bring them to Jim’s attention until he has reached the appropriate conclusions.)

********

_When Jim first meets Cupcake, it takes everything he has in him to not run and hide-- because everything from his size to the stink of beer on his breath has Jim spiralling faster than he can control._

_(All that’s missing is the stained wife-beater and the beer gut and it’s like seeing Frank reincarnate.)_

_As it stands, when he throws the first punch, it’s less out of anger or ego and more out of a strong sense of panic and a kickback from trying to throw off his fight or flight reflex._

_He’s almost glad when the asshole team gangs up on him, something like 4 to 1. The adrenaline is enough to pull him away from the edge and yeah, alright, he gets his ass handed to him. But he’s not about to freak and lose time to shutting down, so he considers it a win._

_To boot, when everything’s said and done, Jim meets the one person who single-handedly lights a raging inferno under his ass._

_Pike looks at him in the eye and does something. Jim doesn’t know what, but it makes him itch to prove the old man wrong. Or prove him right._

_Who knows._

_Hell, maybe it’s just the challenge, or maybe it’s the fact that someone genuinely believes in him for the first time-- but the next thing Jim knows, he’s packed off to be a cadet in the one program that he’d said he’d never join._

_(“You like being the only genius-level repeat offender in the midwest?”)_

_(“Maybe I love it.”)_

_(“Your father was captain of a starship for twelve minutes. He saved eight hundred lives, including your mother's and yours. I dare you to do better.”)_

_(“Four years? I'll do it in three.”)_

********

As it turns out, there’s a reason for Jim’s recent downward turn in behavioral issues, because he hadn’t been kidding about burying all of his problems with the help of a therapist.

Fact of the matter is, right up until the whole shitstorm with Khan, Jim had been doing pretty decent. Granted, he wouldn’t say that he’d been happy with where he’d been, but he’d functioned and that’s what had mattered.

But now, it’s like he’s back to being fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and teetering at the edge of collapse all over again.

Something is not right.

Worse still, Jim is almost a hundred percent sure that pretty much everyone on the ship has noticed his recent erratic behavior, which sucks because he’s supposed to be the fucking captain. Thankfully for him, they all just assume that he’s antsy because he hasn’t been getting laid and all that happens is that he becomes the butt of everyone’s joke for a little while.

At least, that’s what Jim feels safe in thinking, right up until Spock marches up to him and starts to covertly grill him on things.

“It is abnormal in a human male to have such recurring changes in mood and personality without being in the midst of puberty,” he says, eyes narrow and fixed as though he can divine Jim’s every secret from his stare alone.

Jim just barely manages to hold him off from doing a full on medical examination in the middle of the mess hall or worse, from prying.

(“I’m fine, Spock.”)

(“Negative, Jim. You are most certainly not within acceptable behavioral parameters. Therefore you are not, as you say, fine.”)

Honestly, he shouldn’t be as surprised as he is when it’s Spock who figures out what went wrong, where. He also shouldn’t be surprised when his first officer manages to pry the story of how he’d first thrown the psych’s desk through the wall, connects it with his own unfortunate experience at Jim’s hands and, after ridding Jim of nearly a pint of blood, manages to pinpoint the exact cause of his recent problems.

(“I believe that the introduction of Khan’s blood into your body is manifesting in a highly negative manner, Jim. As to the exact reactions, I cannot postulate without further evidence.”)

In the end, it takes every ounce of everything in him to convince Spock to keep that knowledge to himself because he can’t fucking lose everything the way he’s bound to if his condition becomes common knowledge.

Spock’s main argument is that Jim could die. As far as Jim is concerned, he’s got two options: to stay on his ship and run the risk of dying, or to escalate his problems and get a medical discharge so he can concentrate on surviving.

Suffice it to say, Jim would rather die on his ship than live off her.

It becomes a point of contention between the two of them, one that Jim ends up winning because at the end of the day, it’s still his problem.

But that doesn’t stop Spock from hovering around, as though he’s fully expecting Jim to collapse at one point and has made it his life’s mission to be there to catch Jim when it finally happens.

********

_When Jim meets Gaila, she takes one look at him and proceeds to become one of his best friends. She takes him under her wing, shows him around, introduces him to a few people and, best of all, she doesn’t do anything that makes him feel like he needs to run._

_She respects boundaries that he’d never even known he’d had and generally makes it just a little easier to just breathe._

_She becomes his anchor._

_See, that makes Jim eight different sorts of bastard, because he doesn’t even realize what she’d been doing for him until she’s gone, doesn’t even bother to make the connections between her past and his own even though they’d been right there in front of him._

_It isn’t until a month after Nero, that Jim hacks into the school system and learns about the Orion slave trade, and about a young Orion girl who’d been brave enough to run towards freedom instead of safety._

_(She’d told him that she thought she loved him. He’d told her that was weird. There isn’t a day that goes by that he doesn’t hate himself for it.)_

********

The problem with having Spock around all the time now, and he is around all the fucking time, is that it makes it too easy for Jim to notice how well the two of them fit. Worse still, he has all of Spock’s laser focus attention pinpointed on him, anticipating all of his needs about three seconds before they actually become needs and generally taking care of Jim in his own cool, detached way.

Jim hasn’t felt this cared for since, well, Jim’s never felt this cared for, period.

(Well, there’s Bones. But there’ll always be a small part of Jim that wonders if Bones only looks after him because of a combination of it being his job and natural mother-henning tendencies.) 

(Jim isn’t going to bring that up again though. The last time he had, Bones had screamed himself hoarse, punched Jim in the head and then proceeded to not talk to him for a week. It had taken Jim an entire week of model behavior before he’d won his best friend back.)

(He would rather live with never knowing, than lose Bones like that again, however temporarily.)

Point is, it’s Spock doing these things, _Spock_ who’s going out of his way to make sure that Jim eats, and sleeps, and checks his vitals at least twice a day.

And somehow, that appeals to Jim-- in a completely different way to how Bones’ meddling does.

It’s not love, because Jim can’t let himself dive in just yet, if ever. But the possibility is definitely there and it terrifies the hell out of him, makes him want to rail against the unfairness in his life because he’s obviously starting to fall for a man who’s already in a relationship with someone else and Jim is FUBAR to boot.

Clearly this is karmic backlash for every heart he’s ever crushed.

He doesn’t think the universe will award him brownie points, even if he argues that he’d technically been doing all of them a favor by staying far, far away from them.

Then again, with that sort of logic, he’d probably just double his bad karma for introducing himself in the first place.

********

_Meeting Spock for the first time is like taking a deep breath after spending years underwater, for reasons that Jim still doesn’t completely understand. There’s a minute of frozen air, something electric humming just under Jim’s skin--_

_\--then Spock begins to throw accusations at him left, right, and center and Jim’s suddenly and fully back to drowning again._

_Spock isn’t everything Jim had hoped he’d be, and why not? Jim’s only known him for a total of ten seconds. There’s absolutely no reason for that sense of connection._

_(“ You of all people should know, Cadet Kirk, a captain cannot cheat death.”)_

_The rigid Vulcan in front of him doesn’t know what he’s talking about, doesn’t understand that Jim’s spent his entire life doing just that. He doesn’t understand that Jim had done what he’d had to do, because that’s what he’s always done._

_After all, the toughest thing Spock’s ever had to do probably involves rounding to the eighth or ninth decimal place._

_So how dare Spock say that no-win scenarios exist? Of course they don’t. Every situation has its loophole, every problem has a solving answer. No-win scenarios cannot exist in a universe with an unending array of possibilities._

_(“The purpose is to experience fear, fear in the face of certain death, to accept that fear, and maintain control of oneself and one's crew. This is the quality expected in every Starfleet captain.”)_

_Jim just scoffs._

_No win scenarios cannot exist because if they did, there’s no point in Jim fighting so damned hard for every single day of his life. If they did, Jim would become the single greatest example of one, and then where would he be?_

_(“Your argument precludes the possibility of a no-win scenario.”)_

_(“ I don't believe in no-win scenarios.”)_

_The first time Jim meets Spock is also the first time he genuinely considers ending everything. When everything is said and done, why fight when logic dictates that struggling as hard as he has is futile?_

********

Because this is Jim and his life always has to be as dramatic as physically possible, everything comes to a head during a fucking away mission, of all things.

To begin with, the planet they beam down to is the stuff of Jim’s nightmares. It’s like its personal mission is to make Jim’s life hell, like it’s taken a checklist of every one of Jim’s fears and made sure to cross off everything.

The men who inhabit this planet are fucking humongous, first and foremost, and because being fat is still a status symbol in these parts, almost everyone he meets has a beer gut of some kind. And speaking of beer, alcoholism runs rampant because that shit is not cheap and hey, these guys are rich as fuck by their society’s standards. The best way they know to show it off, apparently, is to be seen with bottles of wine or whatever this planet has in place of beer at all times.

Secondly, due to the time of year, almost all of them are shirtless, which is bad enough in and of itself because _gross_. But throw in Jim’s rapidly deteriorating mental state and years of suppressed trauma, and Jim’s various psychoses are starting to rear their collective, ugly head.

Add in the fact that almost all of them make a pass at Jim at one point or another, leers fixed firm on their face as though they’re the ones doing Jim a favor, and it’s a done deal.

In the end, it’s should be no surprise, at all, that Jim ends up blacking out.

********

_Even though he’ll never tell anyone, Delta Vega ends up being both a curse and a blessing, but it still ends up damaging Jim more than he’s comfortable with admitting._

_The good thing is that he meets Spock, Old Spock, Other Spock, whatever. Spock._

_And when Old Spock does his mild-meld which, whoa, way intrusive, he learns that Other Jim and Other Spock had been awesome friends-- and yeah, him and his Spock can’t even be on the same starship together without Jim getting ejected into some uninhabited frozen hell of a planet. But there’s hope for something better there, because there’s a proven precedent._

_But then flip side of it all ends up kicking Jim in the balls-- because apparently, mind melds are a two way street._

_At the same time that Jim is getting decent news, Old Spock ends up being the recipient to all of Jim’s dirty laundry, without Jim ever being the wiser._

_Fuck, Jim doesn’t figure out what had happened until Old Spock suddenly looks at him with horror in his eyes, and pity and every other emotion that Jim never wanted to see and proceeds to take a step backwards, like Jim’s whole life is somehow contagious._

_Jim will probably never be able to describe what he’d felt that day, not to anyone, because the only person who’d ever seen what he’d been through had reacted the way Jim had always thought they would._

_“I apologize,” Spock says after a few minutes of awkward silence, like that makes things any better. “The Jim Kirk whom I knew never suffered so. I was not prepared for such an onslaught.”_

_He sounds genuinely distressed._

_“I’m not the man you knew,” Jim responds in kind. “I’m someone else completely.”_

_There’s a hesitant nod and then they’re off to save the world the only way they know how._

_The whole thing sticks with Jim though, even after everything is said and done, because he’d been in Old Spock’s mind too. He’d seen just how close him and Other Jim, the non fucked up one, were. And he’d never once seen Old Spock step away from Other Jim like that, at least not of his own volition._

_That he’d stepped away from Jim Jim, regular Jim of this universe, is extremely telling._

_For the first time in a long, long time, Jim wonders if maybe he should run while he can, before the people he’s already beginning to care about can turn him away._

_After all, why should anyone have to put up with someone as broken as he is?_

********

When he wakes up again, it’s to the tune of having nearly ruined what should’ve been an easy mission and to Spock-- Spock who looks sort of destroyed and like he wants to hurt something and so, so guilty that it makes something in Jim twist.

(Later on, he’ll find out that he’d essentially frozen, eyes wide and mouth open in a silent scream before he’d taken off like hell itself was at his heels. When one of the natives had managed to catch up to him, he’d viciously kicked at the poor man before dropping like a sack into one of the worst grand mal’s that Bones has ever had to treat.)

(He’ll also learn that Spock hadn’t even stuck around to do his usual rounds of damage control, which warms Jim’s heart in a way that he’s sure is inappropriate.)

As it stands, Spock ends up telling Bones right in front of Jim, which Jim would resent more if he weren’t so busy trying to ride through whatever bullshit his body is throwing at him now.

“Goddammit, Jim!” Bones swears as he draws a whole lot more blood for a full panel and tries to inject Jim with an anti-epilectic without hurting him.

Jim is too busy seizing again to really take offense.

********

_When Jim brings up Amanda in the wake of her death, he does it because he wants Spock to hurt almost as much as he wants Spock to not blow them all up-- because Spock makes him feel worthless again for the first time in years and because Jim refuses to be everything that Other Spock had shown him._

_(He actually /can’t/ be everything that Other Spock had shown him.)_

_It’s not entirely unexpected how much that hurts._

_So Jim says things and does things, lets Spock choke the ever living fuck out of him because he deserves that and more. Spock steps down, Jim steps up, and they end up pairing up to save the world in a scarily effective way._

_Somehow, everything settles a little in Jim’s world._

_(But, to this day, he never realizes what that one event had done to Spock’s psyche. He never realizes that every time Spock comes anywhere near him, he flashes back to the feeling of one Jim dying by his hand and forces himself to be even more careful with his strength than he already is.)_

_(He never realizes how much guilt Spock piles up on himself for an action he’d essentially been made to take while grieving the loss of his own mother.)_

********

The second time Jim wakes up, it’s to the sight and sound and smell of hospital, and to a bed that’s far too comfortable to be in anything other than a long term ward.

There are cards and balloons everywhere and, looking for all the world as though he’s been there for the entirety of however long Jim’s been cooped up this time, is Spock.

“Good afternoon, Captain,” he says, as though everything were perfectly normal. “It is 1400, star date 2260.5.It has been two point four nine weeks since you last achieved consciousness. I will retrieve Doctor Mccoy such that he may take note of your vitals.”

Jim tries to make him wait, tries to ask him what’s going on, but he doesn’t have the energy and things just go dark again.

********

_When all is said and done, Jim ends up the youngest captain in federation history and has the press coverage to prove it. Hell, they all do because his is a ship run by Baby Geniuses (at least that’s what everyone else calls them) and that sort of shit makes history._

_None of them are really happy about it though, because theirs is a history forged in death and also, being in this sort of limelight means that everything gets hung out for the world to see._

_Bones and his divorce._

_Uhura and her family._

_Sulu and Chekov and their ‘sordid affair.’_

_Spock and his bullying problems of yore._

_Jim....and Tarsus._

_When that comes out, the media takes it and runs with it, digs up shit that Jim had been more than happy to bury and throws it out for the world to see. Just like that, the first twelve years of Jim’s life disappears and Jim becomes Tarsus and Hero in the world’s collective eye._

_The only saving grace is when they’re finally given their first mission, a simple meet and greet that takes them off planet for three weeks._

_Jim proceeds to turn his world from ashes and earth to sleek lines and jeffrey tubes, and falls in love in a way he hadn’t ever thought he could-- and with such a shining lady no less._

_He hasn’t looked back since._

********

“I can’t lose her,” is the first thing Jim says when he finally manages to stay awake for more than a few minutes at a time, and the feeding tubes and the breathing tubes and all the other tubes are finally removed from his person-- because the Enterprise is all he’s really got and losing her would definitely suck.

Spock just looks at him, seemingly unflappable as ever. But Jim has seen him panicked, has seen him frantically running after Jim when Jim had been at his absolute worst-- he knows that outward appearance means nothing here.

“Seriously,” Jim continues on, because the silence is almost as painful as the idea of never being able to commandeer the Enterprise again, “I can’t. It’ll kill me, Spock.”

( _It’ll kill me in a way that nothing else ever managed,_ he doesn’t say, _it’ll rip out what’s left of me and leave it in the mud._ )

There’s a moment of quiet and when Spock finally responds, he doesn’t say what Jim expects to hear.

“I have spoken to the Admiralty,” he begins very carefully, “and as this is a singular event and the situation itself is under control, they are willing to overlook what has occurred.”

There’s absolutely no reason, Jim thinks, for Spock to make that sound like death knell. Except, there’s a part of him that’s already railing because-- because--

“Jim,” Spock says, voice gentle as he interrupts Jim’s frantic inner monologue. “Friend. I wish for you to share with me.”

There it is, that proverbial clanging bell that means that Jim is officially out of luck.

It’s obvious that Spock _knows_ at this point, or at the very least suspects something and God, he’s asking Jim as a friend instead of prying it out of him like everyone else had always tried to do. He’s even keeping his posture non-threatening because he knows Jim and that he hates to be cornered and God, when did it happen that Jim had become such an open book?

He’s _asking_ , as though he would fully accept rejection and Jim-- Jim is just so sick and tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop, of waiting for everyone he loves and cares for to turn away from the dirt and filth that fills his soul.

“Okay,” he says after deliberating, voice hoarse and exhausted even as he takes Spock’s hand and places it on his own psi points. “Just, okay.”

If this shit is going to go down, it’s going to go down on his own fucking terms.

“Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you,” he says and then Spock’s in his mind, warm and familiar and still so different from Old Spock that it’s almost giving Jim some weird version of astral whiplash.

 _‘It’s not pretty, Spock,’_ he thinks before he’s letting it all play out in his head, from ages three to four to seven to eight to thirteen to the adult that he’d become-- he lets it go through like there’s one of those old school big screens in his head and his whole life is one big movie.

For the first time ever, he lets it all go-- tells someone about the things he’s been through, about the things that have shaped him, and the things that he’s seen. He rails at the injustice of it all, screams about a life that he’d never asked for, and cries for the parts of himself that he’d lost at too young an age and Spock is there to bear witness to it all.

He’s perfect too; unlike Old Spock, he doesn’t shy away from the fucked-up-ness that is Jim’s mental baggage claims. 

Spock is there and he stays and he anchors Jim through having to relive all the bad things, stays steady for Jim when it becomes obvious that he just doesn’t have the strength.

“I grieve with thee,” he says quietly when everything is said and done, anguish clear in his eyes for the childhood that Jim had never had, for the pain and loss that have dogged his steps since the day he was born.

And for the first time in his life, Jim lets himself break so he can be pieced back together the right way.

_(My mind to your mind.)_

_(My thoughts to your thoughts.)_

********

If Jim ever wrote his own autobiography. Well. The preface would probably be something like, “Hello, I’m Jim. I’m fucked up.” But it would probably end with, “It took some time, and I had some help. But I made it.”

********

_end._

**Author's Note:**

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